Half-Pint Goes to Washington
by Paul Petersen

Demonstrating a remarkable flair for the political world, National Chair of the Young Performers Committee, Melissa Gilbert, journeyed to Washington to lend her considerable support to the newly introduced CARE Bill announced by Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa.

The “Children’s Act for Responsible Employment” targets the hundreds of thousands of kids who are working in our growing fields, who, believe it or not, have a powerful connection to the kids in show business.

Both groups are exempt from national child labor laws!

Accompanied with her cohort, Yours Truly, Ms. Gilbert delivered a powerful speech to the Educational Conference on Global Child Labor sponsored by Senator Harkin, the International Labor Organization of the United Nations, and official participants from around the world. 10 countries were on hand to describe the conditions faced by Earth’s working children.

250 million children are working around the world. Half of them go to work every day. That’s the population of the United States! Americans are too quick to point to other countries when it comes to child labor, ignoring the realities faced by kids in their own back yard, particularly in our enormous agricultural sector where some 850,000 children do the back-breaking work alongside their parents, migrating North and South with the growing seasons.

In remarks echoed by me when it was my chance to speak, Melissa reassured the audience that we were not comparing the rigors of fieldwork with the relatively safe world of children in entertainment. It is the lack of government attention to ALL children in the work force that we find so bothersome. Most people are stunned to learn that kids as young as five and six years old may be working in fields just sprayed with pesticides, and that their work hours are not strictly limited when children are involved in this kind of work. Throw in the lack of mandatory education and a failure to provide “portability of education” and you can see why Melissa and I showed up.

It is time, said Melissa, for America to get its own house in order, and she pledged the vocal support of not only the theatrical unions, but the voices of A Minor Consideration as well.

As a wife and a mother, and as a former “working kid,” Melissa’s contribution to the global fight against unjust child labor in any form was welcomed by one and all.